The Wettest County
Lawless

2,017 words

In one county (Franklin), it is claimed 99 people out of 100 are making, or have some connection with, illicit liquor.
-Official Records, (US) National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, 1935

My brother Forrest once said that nothing could kill us, that we could never die.
-Jack Bondurant, Lawless

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When something formerly legal is prohibited, one of two things will happen: either whichever activity has been placed under a prohibition will cease, or it will continue clandestinely. A new method and location for performing the prohibited activity will have to be found in order to avoid the reach of the law, and the authorities will wish to discover this, stop it, and prosecute those responsible. Perhaps the most famous example of prohibition took place in the USA early last century, and it claimed the name for its own: Prohibition.

Temperance movements had sprung up across the US at the end of the 19th century, led by women because it was they who suffered most from drunken and abusive husbands. Women didn’t have the vote, and so took more direct action, most famously that of Carry Nation. She entered a Kansas saloon in 1900 and took a hatchet to the bar, smashing the establishment’s windows and mirrors with rocks. “You wouldn’t give us the vote”, she said addressing the government, “so I had to use a rock.” She called her bar-room visits “Hatchetations”.

In 1919, American lawmakers voted to embark on the “Noble Experiment”, and the 18th Amendment came into being, prohibiting the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol. It would not be repealed until 1933, but that did not mean it was observed. Far from it, as a huge, nationwide, illicit industry sprang up, with a corresponding and lucrative black market for hooch, rotgut, white lightning, or whichever name was in fashion. Alcohol was produced deep in the woods in great vats and stills, which local law enforcement diverted much of their resources to finding and breaking up. The story of the bootleggers, and their battle against officers of the law (when they couldn’t bribe them with moonshine) was an attempt by the state to replace tolerance of an abused social pastime with a strict injunction enforced by the law. But laws are made to be broken, and legends soon grew of epic battles between officers and fearsome distillers which went on to become a part of American folklore.

A 2008 book by Matt Bondurant, grandson of a family at the heart of Prohibition and ravaged by both the Depression and the Spanish Lady Flu (which, although quaintly named, decimated families), was filmed in 2012 as Lawless. The Wettest County in the World tells the tale of Matt’s grandfather and two granduncles, bootleggers in Franklin County, Virginia, at the height of Prohibition. The film is, as they say, based on a true story.

Middle brother Forrest Bondurant was the seemingly invincible brains of the operation, with his 6’ 6” elder brother Howard, himself badly affected by his experience in World War 1, as his enforcer. The youngest brother, Jack, is the narrator of the movie. During the Bondurants’ reign, journalist Sherwood Anderson named Franklin County “the wettest county in the world”. Forrest is played by the superb English actor Tom Hardy, while Jack is played by Shia LaBeouf who, while an irritating political loudmouth, turns in a good performance as the young man who saw it all happen. LaBeouf had struggled with the film project, but sent Hardy a fan letter and a script. Hardy wrote back to say he loved it and he wanted in.

Lawless is a beautifully shot, atmospheric ensemble piece which opens (as does the book) with the shooting of a pig. These were hard men in hard times, and it is obvious they will do whatever it takes to protect their family. It’s actually a movie about the strength of the family unit, as well as a tale of good men doing bad things, which always makes for compelling cinema. Films allow their audience not just virtual reality, but virtual morality. For the length of a movie, it’s possible to suspend moral judgment and still walk out of the cinema a moral person.

Moonshine could be made from just about anything organic, out of old leather boots if you couldn’t find any turnips, parsnips, or pumpkins. But in the fertile land of Virginia, you could find plenty of everything. We see the boys running their business, and paying off law officers with some of their finest product. “Always happy to oblige an officer of the law”, grins Howards as he hands two crates of white lightning to the local sheriff.

Rural bootlegging may have been an affair between neighbours but, in the cities, moonshining brought a crime wave with it, making the careers of men such as Al Capone. They lived the gangster life to the full, including machine-gunning rivals. They drove fancy automobiles while, in the meantime, on the other side of the mountains, Jack laments that “we were driving round in beat-up old jalopies.”

This buckshee booze wasn’t for tippling. When Jack’s jalopy runs out of gasoline, he unscrews a Mason jar of hooch, fills the tank with it, and drives on. And there wasn’t too much social drinking, with the film’s scenes of drunken abandon orgiastic and hellish. And, as the Bondurant family business grows apace, the violence of the cities makes its way out into the woods and hills. When a pretty woman, Maggie, turns up at the Bondurant place offering to work as a barmaid, and Forrest asks her what a lady like her wants in a place like that, she tells him that “the city can grind a girl down. I was just looking for somewhere quiet” She gets the job, but not the quiet.

Things start hotting up when big-time gangster Floyd Banner drives into town with a Thompson machine-gun in his hand with which he mows down some rivals. Banner is played by another fine English actor, Gary Oldman, and the only pity is that he and Hardy don’t get screen time together in the movie. The arrival of the bigger players in Franklin County prompts a redoubling of police efforts to break up the stills, and the moral framework of the movie begins to emerge.

The arrival of a new Commonwealth Attorney for some premium liquor of his own brings with it one of the creepiest performances outside of a horror movie, and one of the best scenes. Special Deputy Charlie Rakes, played by Guy Pearce, is a very nasty piece of work indeed: perfectly dressed, hair pomaded back, bow-tie and, curiously, no eyebrows. The instant loathing between him and Forrest leads the head of the house to tell the attorney that, “If you send that clown with the bow-tie here again, I guarantee you’ll pull a cleaver out of his “f*****g skull”. The deal the law wanted to make for the Bondurants to continue in their line of work has been turned down, and the war has begun in earnest. The sheriff tells Rakes that he doesn’t much like him. “Yeah?” says Rakes, sipping his tea from a fine China cup. “Well, not many do.”

The message is clear. Make something illegal, and two types of people will benefit financially: those who break the law by making it, and those who are supposed to uphold the law by preventing them from making it. Rakes finds Jack and, when the boy won’t tell him where the stills are, beats his face to a bloody pulp. This earns no sympathy from Forrest, but rather a short lecture that is at the heart of the movie. “It is not the violence that sets men apart. It is the distance they are prepared to go. We control the fear, and without the fear we are all as good as dead.”

The spring is being would up. Retribution is coming, from one side or the other.

The police return to the Bondurant place, but they aren’t looking for a drink. That said, the sheriff almost gets one. After the officers have told Forrest that things are changing, Howard the eldest takes over, knocking the lawman down, forcing a gasoline pump into his mouth and preparing to fill ‘er up until Forrest calls him off. He chides the sheriff. “You ought to know better than to come round here when Howard’s been on the stump whisky for a few days.” But the message is clear. It’s war.

And it escalates quickly. Two Chicago bootleggers visit the Bondurants to buy liquor, but after a fracas in the bar, Forrest knocks them both out. They return later, trap Forrest under the hood of his car, and cut his throat from ear to ear before raping Maggie. Forrest survives by holding his throat together and, while he is hospitalized, Jack takes over the business. He visits Banner with 200 gallons of hooch, which he sells to the Chicago gangster for a price above the mark. Oldman as Banner adds another notable psychopath to his already impressive list: the crooked cop in Leon, the suited football thug in Alan Clarke’s The Firm, and Drexl Spivey the wigga in True Romance. He doesn’t have much of a part in Lawless, but you don’t forget it. He also gives Jack the address of the men who cut his brother’s throat and raped Maggie.

This is Jack’s shadow line, his rite of passage. Forrest doubted he had what it took to get into the family racket, but is impressed with the cash and Jack’s nerve for seeing the dangerous Banner. Forrest is sitting in his chair with his neck looking like Frankenstein’s monster, and he knows someone else is going to have to fight his war for him. Jack is becoming Michael in this family of Hillbilly Corleones. But that doesn’t stop Forrest and Howard visiting the two Chicagoan punks who cut him up.

Next day, Special Deputy Rakes gets a Mason jar all of his own, wrapped in pink, but the liquid inside isn’t just hooch. In it is swimming an accessory usually connected with the male genitalia. Rakes ups his game, smashing stills and tarring and feathering bootleggers. He takes out every family business save one. “In the end,” says Jack, “we Bondurants were the only ones standing.”

The whole way through the movie, the stills genius and car mechanic is a kid called Cricket. Lame from childhood rickets and much loved by everyone, he becomes a target, and Rakes breaks the boy’s neck after his men have blown up the stills. This is the endgame, and the grand finale is a very satisfying, old-style shootout. This time Forrest takes four bullets, but it is beginning to look as though he is as immortal as he believes himself to be.

Two years later, and the era of Prohibition is over. Any movie, whatever the subject, needs a love interest, and there are two in this movie which don’t feel bolted on, as romances often do in films that are not specifically love stories. The whole big, happy Bondurant family are now respectable, and they turned out to be invincible after all. Almost.

Lawless got a mediocre critical response, and is certainly flawed, but it is superbly acted and an insight into one of America’s stranger chapters. The screenplay was co-written by Nick Cave, a musician I have always had a lot of time for, and who also has a literary side. Cave also helps out with the music, along with the late Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees. Cave wanted something authentically hick, but admitted “our bluegrass chops weren’t very strong.” Nevertheless, the band credited as The Bootleggers produced a score which is, as Cave describes it, “raw and brutal and punky.” There is a great cover of The Velvet Underground’s White Light, White Heat which sounds like a punk hoedown.

Despite Lawless’ lukewarm critical reception, it’s been on my rewatch list for a while. Increasingly, we may find ourselves reaching back in time to watch decent movies made before Hollywood’s last decade of Marvel franchises, remakes, and woke claptrap. And I’ll drink to that.